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Phillip Island WSB: Haslam dominates opening Free Practice

Alstare Suzuki man Leon Haslam completely dominated the opening free practice session at a scorching Phillip Island circuit today. The 26 year old was the only man to lap in the 1m 32s bracket, but it wasn’t just a single lap, Haslam logged six laps which would have all been fast enough to top the timesheets.

Speaking to MCN, Haslam said: “The track temperature was up and as a result the track was really greasy and I had both Xaus and Fabrizio crash right in front of me. I tried two of the potential race tyres and on one I set a 1m 32s on my tenth lap.”

Haslam put his impressive pace down to his structured approach to last weeks test at the Australian circuit where he concentrated on establishing a good race set-up.

“I spent two days working with the race tyres and never used a soft tyre just to set a time. My tyre life today still dropped off, but I think everybody’s did and there was a lot of sliding and spinning going on out there. Even though I’ve been fast I’m under no illusion that the other teams will get there by Sunday. Right now we’ve got a good set-up for the hot or cooler conditions and I can be consistent which will be the important thing.”

Max Biaggi claimed second spot and was both fast and consistent onboard his Alitalia Aprilia. Briton Shane Byrne continued his impressive testing pace and overcame a technical problem on his number one bike to log the third fastest time ahead of Jonathan Rea and Carlos Checa.